


Until the End, My Love

by LuthienLuinwe



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Dick Grayson is Cursed, Flashbacks, Immortality, Jason Todd is Immortal, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-06 18:33:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15200864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuthienLuinwe/pseuds/LuthienLuinwe
Summary: Ten thousand lives your love will live. Ten thousand times your love will die.Jason is cursed to a life of immortality. Dick is cursed to be constantly reincarnated, only to die shortly after encountering him. But in one lifetime, the cycle breaks, and Jason will do anything in his power to keep it from starting again.





	1. Prologue / The Curse

**“The story’s old, I know it well. About a wretched evil spell. The power that will break this curse, oh I know, all too well, is locked within myself.”**

_Ten thousand lives your love will live._

A Shakespeare play. Of all the ways he could have spent his time off of work, a Shakespeare play had struck low on his desires. Never before had Jason Todd thought of someone with a better reputation for writing plays that were nothing less than… Adequete. At least they were entertaining, if nothing else. And, well, when one had spare time on his hands, and when one had the spare money to spend, an evening at the theatre was not something completely undesirable.

“I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again. Mine ear is much enamored of thy note. So is mine ye enthralled to thy shape, and thy fair virtue’s force perfore doth move me.” It was absurd. A man dressed as a woman. Still, the man looked wonderful in that dress, and Jason could not help his gaze from wandering. 

“On the first view, to say, to swear, I love thee.”

He was a very pretty man, if nothing else. And the role was cast perfectly. Who better than the world’s most beautiful creature to play the Fairy Queen, known by all for her great beauty?

The play had ended all too soon. God above, Jason could have watched it a thousand times over just to see his fair Titania once more. 

Maybe that Shakespeare fellow did know a thing or two after all. 

He should have left. He should have returned home to balance his books and plan for the next day’s events. He had things to attend to, and really, he knew better than to try and approach the man at all, lest he make a fool of himself and all of those around him.

But he still found himself lingering near the actors, hoping to catch a glimpse of that beauty of a man. “And what,” he froze when he heard that sweet, melodic voice behind him say. “Pray tell, is a man such as yourself doing here?”

“Paying respects to the fair Titania,” Jason has turned and smiled. The man had wiped most of his stage makeup off, though bits still lingered. An eye done in blue, a rouged cheek… A farce, really. Only whores painted their faces in such a lewd manner. “For I do believe she has enraptured my heart.”

“Has she?” the man had smiled, teeth more straight and white than they had any right to be.

It was wrong. It was all wrong. He was set to wed the daughter of a business partner in less than a fortnight. He should not let his mind wander to the places it desired to wander to. “And does the man I have such woo’ed have a name?”

“Jason,” he had smiled.

“Richard,” the man had returned the smile. “May our paths cross again.”

_Ten thousand times your love will die._

They had met in secret. It would have meant death had they been discovered, that much was certain. 

He was twenty when the cough took him.

He was twenty when the woman found him. The woman with her dark hair and evil eyes who had healed him thinking he would then become hers in exchange. “I cannot wed you,” he had said. “My heart belongs to another.”

He had not believed her words at first. Why would he? All knew the stories of witches and the curses they brought. They were stories told to children to keep them in line. 

But the years passed.

And he remained the same. Never ailing. Never aging. Never dying.

It was always the same. Score after God-forsaken score. No matter how many times he moved, no matter how many times he tried to stay away. Jason’s path would cross the raven-haired beauty’s. Always a performer. Always silver-tongued.

He should have stayed away. But the same draw was there. No matter how hard he tried, Jason would always find himself enraptured by the man. At least Richard was fortunate. He never remembered the horrors of his past lives.

Death by beheading.

Death by stoning.

Death by hanging.

Each death occurring mere days after his path was unfortunate enough to be crossed with Jason’s. And each God-forsaken time, Jason had been unable to stop it.

He had switched countries more than once. Continents more than twice. But still the man followed. And still, Jason was unable to resist the lure that would mark Richard for death time and time again.

The people had never been kind to his love. They seemed to find joy when they finally found an offense worthy of death. 

And Jason could only stand by and observe. Helpless. Hopeless.

Time after bloody time.

He wanted to scream at the man to stay away. To stay far, far away.

His life depended on it, after all.

The centuries flew by, and it seemed the hate only grew in the people’s hearts.

The nineteen-twenties had been a favorite. Jason’s path had crossed Richard’s, now going by Dick’s, path in a speakeasy laden with flappers dressed in outfits that would have made the whores from so long ago turn bright red. 

An acrobat by then, as he would be for decades to come. Jason watched the man take the stage, two women at his side. Jason watched as he twisted his body in ways that Jason had never imagined to be possible.

“Have we met?” Dick had asked him after the performance, and for a brief moment, Jason let himself believe that this Dick would remember him. That this Dick would be wise enough to run quickly in the other direction.

“I don’t believe so,” Jason had responded and taken a drink. Not like it would do anything. Gods knew he had tried everything out there, trying to feel something other than the numbness and the pain that followed him wherever he would go.

“A pity,” Dick had responded. “I do so enjoy surrounding myself with beautiful people.”

His throat had been cut four days later.

A mob-related incident, the press had claimed.

The forties had been the most brutal. He had traveled to Europe once more. Surely, surely Dick would not follow him there again. Not after how things had ended the last time they were there.

But sure enough, Jason found him in Poland. Eyes dark blue and full of fear. The Germans had despised Dick’s people. Had sentenced them all to death.

Jason hadn’t even gotten the chance to say ‘hello.’

An activist in the sixties, shot dead in war.

A wild child in the eighties. Dead of complications related to AIDS.

2001, caught in New York on the wrong day.

2020\. It would be any moment that their paths would cross once more. Jason had moved to New Jersey, a change of pace, or at least he had hoped so.

And when the flyers for Haly’s Traveling Circus had appeared, he knew in his gut that the time was coming sooner rather than later.

Another life would end too soon.

And it would be entirely his fault.


	2. 1,000 Years

**"And all along I believed I would find you. Time has brought your heart to me. I have loved you for a thousand years. I'll love you for a thousand more."**

He never liked circuses. Clowns were of the devil, he knew that for a fact. All they did was make kids cry and pretend to be funny. It wouldn't surprise Jason if there were a few killer ones out there. Hell, he'd lived through at least two killer clown epidemics. Maybe that was how Dick was going to go this time. Wouldn't that be fitting?

The Flying Graysons. World renowned acrobats, according to the poster. No better in the world, guaranteed. Dick had to have been twenty by then. Shame he'd never live to see twenty-one. It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. He didn't deserve it. He wasn't the one who had wronged the witch.

But Jason had dragged him into it all the same.

He frowned when he took a closer look at the flier. 'Cancelled indefinitely' printed under the Flying Graysons advert. Had they already met and Jason hadn't realized it? Had he killed his love yet again even before they could be properly introduced? It was rare for that to happen. The last time had been World War II when the Romani had been rounded up. He'd barely gotten the chance to say hello...

At least in some lifetimes, Jason could touch him.

In a limited number, he could love him.

_ I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again. _

He would go back a thousand times if he could. His happiness be damned. He'd caused a man to die more times than he could count, each in a horrific manner. Dick Grayson was damned the moment he took his first breath twenty years prior. And Jason had been the one to damn him.

He bought his ticket, telling himself he would just watch, not engage. It seemed to be the engaging part that damned his love ten thousand times over. He sat in the audience and watched. Lion tamers. Sword swallowers.

And then the trapeze had dropped with a man he knew by build alone by that point. Gods, he was beautiful, draped across the ropes, holding on by pure willpower alone. The trapeze was his canvas, and gods above, was he a master painter on it. Jason could have stayed frozen in that moment for the rest of his eternal life.

He knew he would do it as soon as the trapeze had risen again. He would find Dick in the backstage area just as he had hundreds and hundreds of years ago when they first met.

_ On the first view, to say, to swear I love thee. _

His feet carried him back against the wishes of his mind. He should stay away. He knew, he  _ knew  _ to stay away. Maybe if he did, Dick would have stood a chance. Gods, he wished he could go back in time and never meet him in the first place. He'd undo it a thousand times over. Damn his happiness. Damn his heart. This was his responsibility. This was his burden. And he was stuck with it until the end of the damned world.

How many lifetimes had they done this?

How many more lifetimes would they be forced to do this?

He'd barely made it past the 'Members Only' sign when he saw Dick, usually so magnetically drawn to him, like he was in a state of euphoria he couldn't fight, couldn't break out of it. The curse affected him just as much, if not more, than Jason, after all. A glare set on his face where a drunken smile should have lay. Jason frowned.

Something was wrong.

Something was horribly, horribly wrong.

"Stay the fuck away from me," the man growled, and Jason was taken aback. He knew. That was new. Dick had always been granted the luxury of forgetting. No, forgetting was the wrong word. He never remembered in the first place. Jason was damned to live remembering everything. Dick was damned to die time after time remembering nothing.

"I'm sorry?" Jason frowned. It wasn't like it mattered. They'd interacted. They'd interacted and it was only a matter of time before something went horribly wrong and another young body was placed in another coffin well before its time. Another soul lost to eternity damned to be brought back just to face another gruesome end.

"Stay. The fuck. Away. From. Me."

He knew.

He remembered.

Or at least he suspected.

There was no other option.

Never, in all of the lifetimes, had Dick expressed such a strong hostility toward Jason. He had to know. What other way was there to respond to a man who had effectively killed him dozens, if not hundreds, of times? Maybe he should have been keeping score through the years. Maybe he should have kept some twisted log so he could be reminded of every time he had tried to avoid his love and failed.

"My name's Jason," he said anyway. Get out, the voice in his head told him. Get out and get away, and maybe, just  _ maybe  _ this one would stand a chance. He knew it was false hope, though. Dick never stood a chance. He never would. It was reckless and stupid to get his hopes up and think that they could actually work. That this would be the time it was different and that everything would be okay.

"I know who you are," Dick responded, voice deadly calm and dripping with a hatred Jason had never imagined possible. "And you're going to stay the fuck away from me, do you understand?"

"I understand," Jason sighed, knowing full and well that it was a lie. He couldn't stay away. There was a magnetic attraction between the two of them that would never be broken no matter what they did. The evil woman had been nothing if not throughout. Jason had to commend her for that much. 

He turned and started to leave, but thought better of it and turned back. “What?” Dick snapped, actually snapped at him. Never, in any of his lifetimes, had Jason ever heard Dick use that tone of voice, least of all with him. “I told you to stay the fuck away…”

“You’re in danger,” Jason spoke, keeping his voice as calm and even as he could. “Just… Watch your back the next few days, okay?”

“Is that a fucking threat?” Dick demanded, voice panicked, high-pitched. 

“It’s just the truth,” Jason sighed. He looked the man over once more, drinking the image in. Same dark hair. Same blue eyes that he’d fallen for so many centuries ago. Would saying goodbye ever be any easier? He doubted it.

_ Ten thousand times your love will die. _

He should have just said, “I do.”


End file.
